Governments queue up to buy US spy satellites

At least two American companies have asked the US State Department for
permission to sell spy satellites abroad. Government agencies are deadlocked
over whether to allow the sales.

Al Myers, a vice-president at Science Applications International Corporation
(SAIC) in San Diego, says his company first proposed selling such a satellite
to Spain two years ago. If the sale to Spain is approved, he says, South
Korea is also interested. The United Arab Emirates approached another company,
Litton Itek Optical Systems in Lexington, Massachusetts, with a similar
request.

The reconnaissance satellites under discussion are essentially small
orbiting telescopes aimed at the Earth, attached to a video camera that
transmits images back to a ground station. Both SAIC and Litton have built
components for secret spy satellites flown by the US. Litton was also a
losing bidder for the contract to build the Hubble Space Telescope’s optical
system.

According to Myers, the satellites being discussed for sale abroad are
far simpler than those used by the US. The primary mirror in the system
proposed for Spain is 63.5 centimetres across, a quarter the diameter of
Hubble’s mirror. This means that the smallest terrestrial feature it could
capture on film would be about a metre across. The Hubble telescope, with
an optical system considered comparable to those of the finest US spy satellites,
would pick out objects only 10 to 20 centimetres across if it was aimed
at Earth.

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The satellite systems that would be sold abroad would also have a drastically
reduced ability to transmit data back to Earth, say company executives.
The satellite proposed for Spain would transmit about 1 megabit of data
each second, enough for ‘a frame every so often’, says Myers. Although details
of US spy satellites are secret, specialists believe they transmit hundreds
of megabits of data per second.

Both SAIC and Litton propose selling the satellites without any on-board
data recorders. These allow a satellite to record images in far corners
of the world and download the data later, while flying over a ground station.
Without such recorders, the satellite’s coverage would be limited to the
region close to home, where the satellite could send back images as it collects
them. But Myers says a country can get around this restriction by using
shipboard ground stations.

Systems built for export would probably operate only in the visible
part of the spectrum. The US’s satellites also cover infrared wavelengths,
which allow them to detect heat from nuclear reactors and other industrial
facilities.

According to Myers, a bare-bones reconnaissance satellite could be built
and launched for only $30 million. SAIC’s lightweight system could be launched
by the low-cost Pegasus rocket, which is carried aloft under the wing of
a transport aircraft. Officials at Litton said their system would probably
cost between $100 million and $500 million. A full-scale US reconnaissance
satellite, together with its ground station, is estimated to cost at least
a billion dollars.

The companies’ proposals are expected to spark heated debate within
the government. Pictures from spy satellites have been among the most jealously
guarded secrets of the US government, and have not been shared even with
close allies. Officials with the US intelligence agencies and the Pentagon
will probably resist any sharing of technology for reconnaissance from space.

Although reconnaissance satellites can help to defuse international
tensions and monitor arms control agreements, they can also be powerful
offensive weapons. Both the US and the former Soviet Union have used them
to identify targets for their long-range missiles. An anonymous official
at Israel’s defence ministry, quoted in the Jerusalem Post, accused the
US of trying to ‘supply the Arab countries with bino-culars that will allow
them to see every military movement here’.

Executives from SAIC and Litton say that if the US refuses to sell the
technology, customers will go elsewhere and the US will lose its influence
over how it is used. ‘India has all the technology to do this,’ says Myers.
France is planning to put its Helios satellite, which has a resolution of
1 metre, into orbit in 1994.